How do you equip workplace "follower-ship" without turning it into an excuse for toxic leadership?

That question gets teased our in this episode's intergenerational conversation on the Mode/Switch with Rabbi Elan Babchuck. He helps you see that, if you’re frustrated with your workplace leaders, you may need to strengthen your follower-ship by

• sharing brave feedback from other employees on the floor, and

• concocting new ideas for needed change (in a process Elan calls Plus-Delta)

• communicating the org vision in a way that other followers can hear and share

Being a good follower’s a discerning art. And a risky one. Your leader may be plunging forward toward places you don’t think the org should go! But in any case, there’s a close, close relation between a leader’s ability to forge footsteps and a follower’s ability to speak up and name reality.

Riley Johnston, our Mode/Switch audio and video editor, helps make this podcast a tight half-hour convo. But this week, she had her work cut out for her, because our recording session with Elan was nearly an hour long. Here’s a story he told that, unfortunately, fell to the editing floor.

The morning of our recording session, Elan had been trying to get his three kids out the door for school. His plan for an on-time arrival was working until his daughter sat down on the floor and announced she was going to tie her own shoes. Elan’s fingers were twitching to do it for her. All he could think was, Must. Get. Child. To. School.

But instead of snatching the laces from his daughter, Elan pulled himself up short and asked which was better: being on-time to school or empowering his daughter. He went with option B.

That’s just one of the stories he tells to show how good leadership (what he was trying to do as a dad) and active follower-ship (what his self-directed daughter sought to be) are integrally bound up in each other.

And as a social entrepreneur, innovator, nonprofit leader, and CEO (not to mention a rabbi), Elan’s done a lot of leading, as you can see here. He’s also been widely published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, Washington Post, and Religion News Service. He’s spoken here at Calvin at the Festival of Faith & Writing about insights from his co-authored book Picking Up the Pieces: Leadership After Empire (2023, Fortress Press).

This week’s team includes Ken the Boomer, David the Xer, Emily the Xennial, and LaShone the millennial. We were delighted to speak with Elan, who’s our first return guest. Check out his earlier appearance ⁠here⁠.

The Mode/Switch Team’s on vacation till mid-January. If you celebrate this holiday, we wish you a Merry Christmas. And given that this week’s guest was a rabbi, I’d be especially remiss if I failed to say Happy Hanukkah!

Jenni Fields joins the pod to show why workplace effectiveness depends on likability, not on being liked. (Our Gen Z and Boomer discuss the the up and downsides of riz.)

Some years ago, a manager cautioned me about my performance. I took the warning seriously, because I’d made some mistakes that confirmed what I took to be his poor opinion of me. Maybe he gave me the caution because he was genuinely trying to help me out. Maybe I nodded my head because I was trying to be openminded. But it was clear we didn’t like each other very much.

Although we smiled a heckuva lot, the room was thick with mistrust.

The discomfort was so distracting in fact that I didn’t notice the backhanded compliment in his cautionary word:

“You know, well-liked people,” he said, nodding in my direction, “have to be careful.”

I wish now that I’d held up my hand like Diana Ross of The Supremes, “Stop! In the name of like!” I wish I’d said, “Boss, it’s time for a mode/switch!” I wish I’d said that the real question wasn’t, ‘Am I well-liked at work?’ but ‘Am I likable?’” But I couldn’t have said those things back then, because I hadn’t yet read Jenni Field’s excellent new book Nobody Believes You.

This week on the Mode/Switch Pod, it’s time to rewrite work-culture communication! Jenni helps correct the confusion between the Michael Scott Syndrome (I Need to Be Liked) and the quality of credible leadership that Jenni calls likability (I need to be warm and competent). If you’re wondering what the difference is, you’re in good company. Our team—Ken the Boomer, David the Xer, Emily the Xennial, and Madeline the Gen Z—had quite a time “unpicking” (as Jenni would say, in her British idiom) all sorts of complex emotional qualities like charisma and competence and lightheartedness.

Jenni’s great laugh is contagious, and her flexible thinking will help you find flow in the trickiest dynamics of working community.

She's also an authentic work-culture sage. Wait, scratch that! She dislikes the word authentic and prefers the word credible, a term she’s thoroughly discussed in Nobody Believes You, a book that helps you (as her subtitle puts it) “Become a leader people will follow.” (She’s also written the resourceful text Influential Internal Communication: Streamline Your Corporate Communication to Drive Efficiency and Engagement, which is sitting at my elbow as I write this podcast description.)

This is our 93rd episode. I think it may be our very best. The conversation moves fast, but goes deep. It allows for difference but shares good humor and good will. Jenni has a way of pouring wisdom into people around her and then pulling it out of them as well.

So, if you’ve been reading these podcast descriptions over the past few months and thinking that, sometime in here, you really oughta listen. This is your sometime.

What if the best way to improve workplace communication is to do less of it, at least for a while? Ross Chapman joins the pod to explain why new rhythms of rest can do what more messaging never will.

Workplace miscommunication is expensive. According to one Axios report, “Employees lose over a month each year dealing with ineffective internal communication.” Not hard to imagine, right? You know what it’s like trying to find instructions buried in an email—only to realize the instructions actually came through a Teams message. Or a post on Viva Engage. Or, wait, did the boss text us the protocols?

Workplace miscommunication is so expensive, in fact, that it’s tempting to give into the desperate maxim that better communication must mean more communication.

But this week’s guest, Ross Chapman of the Denver Institute, suggests counter-intuitively that some silos in the workplace can’t be dismantled by more and more messaging. Intergenerational silos, in particular.

His organization has, in fact, innovated a provocative practice that improves workplace community by creating new rhythms of rest.

Wait, sabbaticals for every employee, not just the CEO? Whut? How? I know, I know, but Ross shows us how it’s done.

I gotta say, too, that, as a workaholic Gen Xer, I love what happens to my consciousness every time I sit down with my Mode/Switch cohosts: Madeline (Gen Z), Ken (Boomer), Emily (Xennial), and LaShone (Millennial). If you’re asking, “Am I crazy? Is work supposed to be this pressurized?” These amazing coaches validate the widespread sense that workplaces too often feel like stuck places. I’m an infernal optimist. But their realism keeps me grounded—without letting go hope for renewal.

Big shout out, too, to Riley Johnston, our Mode/Switch audio editor, who helps keep our conversations tight and on point.